Disability and Occupational Labor Transitions: Evidence from South Korea

Rhee, Serena

Disability and Occupational Labor Transitions: Evidence from South Korea

KDI Journal of Economic Policy, 2020, vol. 42, issue 3, 53-85

Abstract: We examine how certain occupational physical requirements affect labor transitions of disabled workers by exploiting a unique feature of South Korean Disability Insurance (DI), where award rules are based solely on an applicant’s medical condition, independent of his previous occupations. We estimate the labor market response to a health shock by constructing a physical intensity measure from O*NET and applying it to longitudinal South Korean household panel data. Our results suggest that health shocks initially lead to a 14 to 20 percent drop in employment and that this effect is greater for workers who previously held physically demanding occupations. Those who remain part of the labor market exhibit higher occupational mobility toward less physically demanding jobs. These findings imply that the magnitudes of income risks associated with health shocks vary depending on occupational and skill characteristics.

Keywords: Disability; Labor Supply; Occupation; O*NET (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/225230/1/jep-42-3-3.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:kdijep:225230

DOI: 10.23895/kdijep.2020.42.3.53

Access Statistics for this article

KDI Journal of Economic Policy is currently edited by Dongseok Kim

More articles in KDI Journal of Economic Policy from Korea Development Institute (KDI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().